Friday is the last day to enter the Small World Photomicrography Competition. But even if you haven't been busy snapping nanophotos, you can still enjoy the work of previous years' winners at the competition website.

Most of the work is at the microscale, an order of magnitude bigger than nanoscale, but it's still a magnificent showcase exposing the beauty of an unseen world.

Pictured here is a quantum dot fluorescence image of a mouse kidney by Thomas J. Deerinck, 2nd Prize winner in the 2005 competition. Mouse kidneys never looked better.

I highly recommend the gallery both for its sheer aesthetic pleasure and as a way to get to know the nanoworld. A picture, in this case, is worth a billion words.